O Mang, O tswa kae, O ya Kae? || My Cradle, My Story, My Heritage.
The exhibition is a channel of communication that seeks to be a meditative notion of expression that explores African geometric patterns, lines, shapes, and forms in various artistic mediums developed from personal life experienes and upbringing memories.
O mang? O tswa kae? O ya kae? takes you on a colorful, geometrics, patterned journey of diverse composition all of its own that fascinates one. The works have patterns that are enigmatic, intriguing, and as reductive as the most sophisticated abstract artist who seeks to refine and define by systematic mark-making. Preserving personal adornment of lived experiences shaped by culture, personal identity, a spirituality that finds healing through African geometric patterns, vivid colors, and relationship with nature.
The curatorial practice embraces the vast formation of each artist in their creative expression. Their use of intangible rhythms and deliberate contrasts are built up by leaving areas of stillness and quiet between the horizontal and longitudinal lines and the expressive free-flowing motifs that form of repetition, shape and knowledge, feelings, and values.
Very often we tend to overlook the power of redefining ourselves and what core values shape us. The COVID-19 pandemic allowed many to introspect self and re-evaluate where they come from, acknowledge the lived experiences and express the paths traveled, and move forward. It is during these unprecedented times but also give hope. The exhibition, therefore, expresses the values of the artists, preserve and capture the human behavior of which they reflect their environments and various aspects of their lives in shapes and emblems.
#BopheloKeART #AfricanGeometric #Healing #Culture
Artwork above: Khotso Mahloma, Thinking Hard, 2021, Acrylic, Polish, Gold spray on blanket, 150 x 150 cm, R45,000 ex. VAT
Boitumelo Makousu, (also known as Kgosikgadi Maditshaba) is a Potchefstroom-based creative, writer, researcher, cultural and heritage archivist/enthusiast. Being a BA Hons Tourism scholar with interests in the arts and heritage sector has embarked on a journey with Art & Tourism and re-imaging how they provoke new thinking & appreciation of the curation and preservation in the arts that encourages one to travel. My curiosity and eagerness for new forms of culture, creative spaces and curation has bear fruit in my interest in GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) and exploring ways to preservation and archival of our cultural heritage that is formed, memories created, conversations unpacked and narratives told both manually and virtually. Art and Tourism are #Bophelo Ke ART.
Ras Silas Motse, Raising from the Ashes V, 2021,Burned artwork ashes, smoke, charcoal, spray paint, acrylics, bold markers and pen on brown paper, 169 x 153 cm, R38,000 ex. VAT
302 x 571 cm | 118 7/8 x 224 13/16 in.
© Gilbert & George. Courtesy White Cube
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